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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411103">Herbal Remedy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llybian/pseuds/Llybian'>Llybian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Summer Nights [25]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Slayers (Anime &amp; Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Established Relationship, F/M, Grocery Shopping, One of those ones where we compare ourselves to things</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:14:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,254</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llybian/pseuds/Llybian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t make fun,” Filia chided. “It’s amazing what you can do with herbs. Caraway seeds, for example,” she said, taking a scoop and ladling some of the seeds into the plastic bag, “can cure snake bites, bring down fevers, and ease sensitive stomachs.”</p><p>“And they’re delicious on rye bread,” Xellos finished.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Filia Ul Copt/Xellos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Summer Nights [25]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/796563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Herbal Remedy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Filia had to admit, Xellos wasn’t the <em>worst</em> person in the world to go grocery shopping with. Oh, he certainly wasn’t as attentive a helper as Jillas or as willing to carry bags as Gravos, but at least he didn’t double the grocery bill, which was more than she could say for Val and his growing-boy appetite. So with Jillas minding the store and Gravos taking Val to clarinet lessons, she could at least say it wasn’t ungodly awful to have Xellos accompany her.</p><p>…Although not out loud.</p><p>“Try not to drop anything this time,” she told him testily as they navigated through the crowded aisles of the outdoor market. “I’m sick of hearing ‘Clean up in aisle 5!’ everywhere we go.”</p><p>“Accidents happen, Filia,” he informed her sagely, readjusting his grip on the paper bag he’d deigned to carry.</p><p>“Accidents happen suspiciously often around you!” she snapped back before turning to look at her shopping list. “Let’s see…  I think that’s all we need for food, but…” She looked around. “Oh!”</p><p>She glided over to a table with shelves behind it in the far corner of the bazaar. Several glass containers filled with seeds and dried leaves and stalks lined it, each with a tiny handwritten label. An elderly woman behind the counter nodded to Filia before turning back to her wares.</p><p>“My stock is pretty much gone and with cold and flu season just around the corner,” Filia explained, picking up a plastic bag and looking around at the selection, “well, you just can’t be too careful.”</p><p>Xellos put down the bag he was carrying and gingerly observed the description on one of the herbs. “Truly,” he said, “sage is the miracle drug of our generation.”</p><p>“Don’t make fun,” Filia chided. “It’s amazing what you can do with herbs. Caraway seeds, for example,” she said, taking a scoop and ladling some of the seeds into the plastic bag, “can cure snake bites, bring down fevers, and ease sensitive stomachs.”</p><p>“And they’re delicious on rye bread,” Xellos finished.</p><p>Filia closed the bag of caraway seeds, annoyed, but not about to deny a basic fact. “That too,” she said, picking up a prepackaged bag of reddish leaves and glancing at the label. “You have to know what you’re doing with herbs,” she commented, almost to herself. “It takes understanding and finesse; otherwise the cure can be worse than the disease.”</p><p>“Then I await the inevitable trip to the local clinic to get your stomach pumped,” Xellos commented.</p><p>Before Filia could respond harshly, Xellos pointed to something on one of the shelves that had caught his eye. “Do you need one of those?”</p><p>“One of what?” Filia asked, teeth gnashed together as she looked to see what he was pointing at.</p><p>“You know,” Xellos said, “that mushroom that looks strangely like a—”</p><p>She slapped his hand away and let out a shriek before he could finish his sentence. “<em>I don’t need an aphrodisiac!</em>” she whisper-screeched at him, scandalized.</p><p>“Ah, so you have the opposite problem, then?” Xellos concluded knowingly. “Then perhaps you should try this?” he asked, pointing to a thin green stalk with tiny white blossoms growing in bunches at the top. “The sign says it’s good for repressing sexual desire.”</p><p>“Would you <em>please</em> keep your voice down?” Filia demanded, as the old woman working behind the table gave the two of them an odd look. Filia smoothed back her frizzing-from-frustration hair, and nodded to the plant Xellos had indicated. “That’s cowbane,” she said haughtily. “They used to grow it around the temple.”</p><p>“That doesn’t surprise me in the least,” Xellos commented. “Does it work?”</p><p>Filia opened her mouth to respond, but hesitated. Finally she said, “Technically, yes. It’s a very dangerous poison.”</p><p>“Oh, I see. So it solves the problem permanently,” he said with a smile.</p><p>He walked along the edge of the table, looking at the assortment of plants. “Come to think of it,” he said, “a lot of these are poisons. Oh, several are harmless, but a large portion are downright lethal.”</p><p>He stopped at one particular plant—a leafy one with ominous black berries. “Belladonna,” he read.</p><p>Filia looked uneasily over his shoulder at the plant. “I know some people use it for a pain killer, but it’s so temperamental that it’s just never seemed safe to me.”</p><p>“Isn’t this the same plant that makes witches fly?” Xellos asked off-handedly, not taking his eyes off the glass display where the plant sat.</p><p>Filia gave him a curious look. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “<em>Levitation</em> makes witches fly.”</p><p>Xellos gave a slight sigh. “That’s not really what I meant.”</p><p>“Well then you should say what you mean,” Filia retorted grouchily.</p><p>“Deadly Nightshade, the devil’s herb… Belladonna,” Xellos read again. “Why does it not surprise me that a fatally poisonous herb has a name meaning ‘beautiful woman.’”</p><p>Filia twitched. After being around Xellos this long she was developing an instinct for when he was insulting her. He liked to do so in clever ways with sly implications that he thought she wouldn’t pick up on, but she was wise to him. Of course, this one put her in a bind. She couldn’t respond to him calling her poisonous without acknowledging that he’d called her beautiful.</p><p>In the end, she bit her lip and ignored the barb. “Devil’s herb,” she said, “that reminds me—I’ve got to pick up some devil’s hairpins.” She reached out to scoop a few blackened looking slender leaves into another baggy.</p><p>Xellos gave her a long look. “Filia,” he said, “of all people, <em>I</em> shouldn’t be the one to have to tell you this, but plants with ‘devil’ in their name are usually poisonous. It’s one of those handy tip-offs like ‘bane’ and ‘deadly.”</p><p>“I know <em>that</em>,” Filia snapped. “For your information <em>everything</em> is poisonous at a certain dose. But with the right know-how, plants that can kill in large doses can save lives in small doses. And the right dose is different for different people. Not everything with ‘devil’ in its name is as toxic as <em>you</em>,” she added, because she needed some kind of revenge for the Belladonna comment—the insulting part as well as the purposefully confusing compliment part.</p><p>“I see,” Xellos pondered. “So what’s the ideal dose of me?”</p><p>Filia made a face. “Even small doses of you make me nauseous.”</p><p>Xellos held onto his smile, but it had gone all crinkly and annoyed. “Oh?”</p><p>“And,” Filia went on, a wicked thought striking her, “you remember what cowbane is supposed to do?”</p><p>The thin smile turned into a very definite frown. “That’s uncalled for.”</p><p>“The truth hurts,” Filia jabbed back.</p><p>Xellos thought the lady doth protest too much. “Are you sure you haven’t gotten that backwards? Like you’d need the cowbane after taking a dose of me? That seems much more likely to me.”</p><p>Filia scowled. All the ways she could think of to take a dose of Xellos were… no. “You are <em>not</em> an aphrodisiac.”</p><p>“Then what am I?” Xellos pressed on. “What’s my medical benefit?”</p><p>“You don’t have one,” Filia informed him. “You’re noxious through and through.”</p><p>“Oh, but I must have some kind of benefit—in the right quantity and to the right person. I think someone told me that even deadly poisons do. …What do I cure?”</p><p>Filia was flabbergasted, not just because she didn’t want to be forced into an answer but because he… because he <em>always</em>… “Why do you always want to do this?” she demanded.</p><p>“Do what?” Xellos asked. “Talk about herbs? I think this is the first real conversation we’ve had about them.”</p><p>“Not that,” she said dismissively. “It’s like you always want us too…” she trailed off, trying to think of how to describe it, “<em>similize</em> each other or something!”</p><p>“Similize?” Xellos repeated as though he’d just picked up something disgusting like a used tissue or a made up word.</p><p>“Yes, similize!” Filia snapped, triumphant. “As in make a simile.”</p><p>“Simile is a word,” Xellos answered, “but I very much doubt that ‘similize’ is.”</p><p>“I verbified it,” Filia retorted. “It <em>is</em> what you do anyway.”</p><p>“What makes you think I want to be… ‘similized?’” Xellos asked, a little derisively.</p><p>“You want me to compare you to an herb—that sounds pretty… similizey…ish,” Filia finished lamely. “And this isn’t even the first time,” she pointed out, voice rising in strength once more. “We go to the zoo, you compare me to an iguana; I try to pick out what tea to have and somehow you turn the conversation into one entirely about you; we can’t even look at a spiderweb without talking about what bug each of us would be!”</p><p>“The first one was more of a garden variety taunt than a simile,” Xellos pointed out, but without gaining much traction.</p><p>Filia ignored him. “It’s like… every conversation we have somehow gets overlaid with a discussion about… about… it’s all just you and me! And I suppose it’s sort of a nice poetic convention,” she admitted, “but if we’re going for poetry then isn’t the subject usually… flowers, or moonlight, or summer days? Something more romantic like that?”</p><p>Filia nearly slapped her hand over her mouth. She should <em>not</em> have said the R-word. It didn’t matter that she’d… well, that she’d <em>noticed</em>. She did <em>not</em> want to be the one to mention it first.</p><p>And ooooh he’d make her suffer for it. She could practically see his faux-innocent expression already, coupled with, ‘Romantic? Are we supposed to have romantic conversations now, Filia? Do you imagine me writing a sonnet comparing you to the rebirth of spring? Do tell, Filia, do tell. I’ve always wondered what you write in your diary at night and I must say this has been very eye-opening. Are you quite sure you don’t want that cowbane? Hmm?’</p><p>“Herbs aren’t <em>un</em>romantic,” he pointed out, completely failing to take the bastard-route. “Many of them are flowers, after all, and quite beautiful. The right herb can cleanse and heal, while the wrong one can bring swift death. As far as romantic subjects go, they seem ripe for comparison.”</p><p>Filia stared for a minute, stunned not only at her escape but at the fact that he was taking this conversation seriously. “I… I suppose,” she finally said. “But that still doesn’t change the simile thing!” she said, regaining her footing and pointing an accusatory finger at him. “Why do you always insist on making me compare you to things?”</p><p>Xellos shrugged. “Why do you think?”</p><p>“Because…” she began, thinking carefully, “…because you like to be objectified?”</p><p>Xellos frowned. “Try again.”</p><p>“Because…” she trailed off. It was like… maybe they <em>could</em> say these things without the trappings of figurative language, but it would be… dangerous. It was a way of figuring each other out without the risk of plainly asking. It was their process, together, of finding out what they were to one another.</p><p>“I think I know,” she said quietly.</p><p>He gave her a searching look but did not press her for an answer. “Good,” he said. “So then can you tell me… what do I… no, what do <em>we</em> cure each other of?”</p><p>Filia thought. It felt like there was so much to say, but so little that she could actually communicate. She took a deep breath and tried: “…Patience.”</p><p>Xellos turned this over in his mind and then nodded slowly. “I agree,” he said. “Usually patience is something I value, but… there are times when it can be an impediment to what really matters.”</p><p>There was a long silence. Filia stared at the floor. Finally Xellos picked up the bags of groceries and herbs that they’d set down. “Let’s go home, Filia,” he said.</p><p>“…Right,” Filia said. It was all so hard to pin-point things in conversations with Xellos. There was where she knew they were and where they pretended they were. There was such a big difference between the two that there was always the danger of a slip-up.</p><p>Xellos nodded to one of the items on the shelf. “Are you <em>sure</em> you don’t want to get that mushroom shaped like a—”</p><p>“No!” Filia exploded. “Stop asking!”</p><p>“Of course,” Xellos said meaningfully. “Why would you need that when you have me?”</p><p>Filia grit her teeth. “We decided that you cure <em>patience</em>, remember?”</p><p>“Exactly,” Xellos said, drawing up next to her and putting the hand that wasn’t holding grocery bags against the small of her back. “So let’s go home and really lose our patience with each other.”</p><p>Filia let out an appalled sort of sound, but didn’t move away from him. “You can’t pull those kinds of comments on me and expect them to go over my head anymore,” she informed him sourly. “I <em>know</em> what you’re implying.”</p><p>“Perfect,” Xellos said, “that’s even better.”</p><p>Filia grumbled slightly to herself as they strolled toward the exit of the bazaar so that they could pay for their groceries, take them home, put them away and then… alright, <em>maybe</em> they’d be a little… impatient. Anyway, patience is all well and good, but at some point, she realized, it had just become the thing holding them back.</p><p>And maybe… maybe he wouldn’t make such a terrible remedy after all.</p><p>Filia couldn’t suppress a smile. “I’m kind of disappointed in you, you know,” she said.</p><p>He turned to her with a puzzled look. “Why?”</p><p>She jabbed at his shoulder with her finger. “Because you didn’t make a ‘take one and call me in the morning’ joke.”</p>
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